Join Bates College Professor Joseph Hall as he explores the question of how Wabanakis cultivated their ties to their homelands even as European-American colonists dispossessed them of most of that territory. Wabanakis, whose name translates as “the people of the Dawnland,” are the indigenous peoples of northern New England and eastern Canada. Their place names describe a particular set of relationships to Maine. Some names suggest how people moved over the land or—more likely—over the waters of Maine by describing the good portages and the dangerous rapids. Others mark good locations for gathering or growing food. Some of these names are still used today. Others have fallen out of use. All of them describe how Wabanakis made this place their home.